Recent studies in the word found an increase of substance use among medical students.

To determine the prevalence of substance use and associated factors among medical residents in Tunisia.

It was a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study among medical residents from the 4 medical faculties of Tunisia. A questionnaire was created from Google Forms and was published on the social network Facebook. We asked about the current consumption of different psychoactive substances. We used the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) to identify depressive symptoms.

The sample included 241 residents. The female sex was predominant (83.4%, n = 201). The average age was 28.18 (± 2.13) years. Among these residents, 27.8% (n = 67) currently consume at least one psychoactive substance and 71% (n = 171) had depressive symptoms. The substances consumed by residents were: tobacco 18.7% (n = 45), alcohol 18.7% (n = 45), cannabis 6.2% (n = 15) , amphetamine 3.3% (n = 8), sleeping pills (without medical prescription) 2.9% (n = 7), hallucinogens 2.9% (n = 7), cocaine 2.1 % (n = 5) and inhaled solvents 0.4% (n = 1).

The use of at least one psychoactive substance was significantly associated with male sex (p = 0.01), the presence of financial problems (p = 0.08), lack of religiosity (p <0.001), feeling of life dissatisfaction (p = 0.01), uncertainty about life events (p = 0.05) and the presence of depression (p = 0.018).

Psychoactive substance use has become a growing problem among residents in Tunisia. The associated factors should attract attention to identify these subjects.

No significant relationships.

Depression and suicide risk are disturbing issues within the medical community. In many countries, physician’s mental health is not a concern, due to the fact that many do not even consider medical staff as potential mental health patients. However, health care providers are an at risk population for phycological affliction due to their heavy workload.

We aim to describe the prevalence of depressive symptoms and suicidal risk among medical residents from health centers of Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.

A cross-sectional descriptive study was made, between the months of February and May 2021, using the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-2) and the Plutchick Suicidal Risk Scale.

There was a total population of 507 residents, where 231 completed the survey. Of these, 1 recanted his participation, and 14 were excluded according to the study’s criteria, resultingin a total of 217 residents. The overall prevalence of depressive symptoms was 24.9% and suicidal risk was 22.94%. Residents who worked in a private center had 3.83 times more risk of suffering depressive symptoms compared to those who belonged to the public sector. Furthermore, residents from Internal Medicine (39.5%) had a higher prevalence of depressive symptoms, and residents from Anesthesiology (42.2%) suffered a higher suicide risk compared to other medical residences.

A disturbing percentage of the medical residents suffer from depressive symptoms and suicidal risk. Therefore, residency programs should offer assistance to help prevent and manage mental health disorders.

No significant relationships.

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused challenges for healthcare systems worldwide. Recent data indicates that the psychological impact has differed with respect to occupation. In many countries, medical residents have been on the front line of this pandemic. However, data on the psychological impact of infectious disease outbreaks, and COVID-19 in particular, on medical residents are relatively lacking.

The aim of our study was to assess the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical residents working on the front and second line.

An electronic survey was sent to all medical residents in Qatar. Depression, anxiety and stress were assessed by the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale – 21 Items. Professional quality of life was measured by the Professional Quality of Life measure.

Of the 640 medical residents contacted, 127 (20%) responded. A considerable proportion of residents reported symptoms of depression (42.5%), anxiety (41.7%) and stress (30.7%). Multivariate analysis of variance showed significant effects of seniority in residency, with junior residents having poorer outcomes. In addition, there was a statistically significant interaction effect with moderate effect sizes between gender and working on the front line, as well as gender, working on the front line and seniority, on mental health outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have a negative impact on junior residents’ mental health. Preventive measures to reduce stress levels and easy access to professional mental health services are crucial.

To evaluate the effectiveness of a brief suicide management training programme for Japanese medical residents compared with the usual lecture on suicidality.

In this multi-center, clustered randomized controlled trial, the intervention group attended a structured suicide management programme and the control group, the usual lecture on depression and suicidality. The primary outcome was the difference in residents' cumulative competency score to manage suicidal persons from baseline (T0) to 1 month after the intervention (T2), determined using the Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI-1) score, at individual level.

Analysis of 114 residents (intervention group n = 65, control group n = 49) assigned to two clusters in each group revealed no change in SIRI-1 score from T0 to T2 or immediately after the intervention (T1) between the two groups. As a secondary analysis, discrepancy in judgement between the participants and Japanese suicidologists was examined immediately after the intervention in the adjusted model, with a mean difference in score of 9.98 (95% confidence interval: 4.39–15.56; p = 0.001).

The structured programme was not proven to improve competency in suicide management when measured by the SIRI-1 score. Further elaboration of the programme and valid measurement of its outcome would be needed to show the program's effectiveness.